Recently, I was watching this Dividing Lines podcast with James White.

White has been saying for some time that the Roman Catholic pope Francis is at least an inclusivist (i.e. you don’t need explicit faith in Jesus Christ to be saved: any faith move towards God counts as implicit faith in Christ anyway). But he is probably a universalist (i.e. all religions lead to God). He is also pro-homosexual.

Some Roman Catholics are resting on the belief that Francis will eventually be declared an antipope. Not only is there no guarantee that this will occur, but it is just as likely that the leftist Roman Catholics will declare the traditional popes to have been antipopes (not that they would need to bother), as the current leadership appoints the next generation of leadership. Moreover, any resolution to this problem will almost certainly not take place during the lifetime of the person making the claim.

This boils down to:

That’s cope. It’s sticking your head in the sand.

It doesn’t help Catholics today to know what the correct teachings of the church are and which are heresy. A whole generation (or two) of Catholics could be lost due to being deceived by this “antipope.”

James White noted that in his debate with Roman Catholic Alex from “Voice of Reason,” that Alex had claimed that if the church ever blessed same sex marriages then you can know that Roman Catholicism is false. There you go!

The problem with this is that it assumes that the change will occur quickly and clearly. But it won’t. The changes will occur ambiguously and slowly, perhaps over a couple generations. It will grow slowly with things like Fiducia Supplicans—which has “unofficially” actually already resulted in blessing same sex marriages—and ultimately develop over decades (if necessary) with different popes, bishops, and congregations (if necessary) all contributing to the change.

If tomorrow the Roman Catholic church officially embraced homosexual marriage, it would be a quick enough change that Alex would immediately realize that Roman Catholicism is false. But, there is a very good chance that by the time this actually occurs, Alex will either be dead or no longer influential. It won’t matter that he would have detected that Roman Catholicism is false, because his children (or their children) won’t detect it, or if they do won’t perceive it as heresy. The next generation (and, frankly, the current one) isn’t going to abandon Roman Catholicism if it blesses same-sex marriage, even if their parents would have (after all, what’s stopping them from reading the signs and leaving now?!).

The Roman Catholic Church is corrupting too slowly for it to be stopped in time.

This is the way that sin works. It creeps in slowly, hidden, like a thief in the night. The church’s corruption is simply moving too slowly for you or I to be fast enough to detect it and do something about it.

How do I know this? Because we saw it in the mainstream Protestant churches over the last couple of generations. The same thing is playing out in Roman Catholicism. The church will corrupt so slowly that the ever shrinking number of traditionalists will rationalize the changes in the name of unity (rather than divide and condemn, divide and condemn, oh no! Divide and condemn, Oh no!). Perhaps half of them are already are rationalizing it, as we saw after fiducia supplicans was released. By the time the church finishes its corruption, the men who could have stood up collectively and stopped it will be gone. Men like the recently excommunicated Archbishop Vigano.

The general principle does not just apply here. It has applied to Protestants, Orthodox, and Catholics for a thousand years or two. Doctrinal innovation takes generations. It simply moves too slowly for people to be fast enough to react to it.

The Roman Catholic Eucharist took centuries to corrupt and develop. Even when the corruption began in 350AD, it took about 50 years for the initial changes to really take off, and another few hundred years to fully develop the concept into the Latin rite that we know today.

Each generation accepted the corruptions that the previous generation had made, adding a few subtle changes of their own before passing it along. Almost nobody noticed the changes as they occurred, and those that made too big of a fuss were excommunicated, executed, or branded as heretics.

Many times I have pointed out how it took a couple generations from the early to late fourth century to forget and invert what “the custom of Rome” meant in the Council of Nicaea. From out of the historical inferiority of Rome and its bishop, the Roman Catholic Church determined that Rome had supremacy and its bishop had primacy. Just change something slowly enough, and it can be completely inverted in only a generation or two. The entire existence of the papacy is based on this principle.

Echoing Timothy Kauffman, I have also pointed out how it took centuries for the church to forget why Jesus served watered wine at the Last Supper. This eventually contributed to the East/West Schism as they disagreed on how the Lord’s Supper must be celebrated. They couldn’t celebrate the Lord’s Supper together because both sides misunderstood how first century wine had been manufactured, prepared, and served.

Given enough time and effort, the church can be made to hold any belief. Given enough time, transgender pastors might one day preach peace, harmony, inclusion, and sparkle while condemning the rustic bigotry of Jesus. Oh, they already do this? Who knew!

Without “Sola Scriptura” there is no way to avoid the near infinite proliferation of heresy. One cannot prevent the inevitable labeling of true orthodoxy as heresy. The very names of those who corrupted it most significantly—the Orthodox and Catholic (“universal”) Churches—reflect this inversion. The corruption just moves too slowly for you to stop it in time.

It’s like the idiom of the frog slowly boiling in the pot, refusing to jump before its too late to do anything about it.